Quotes about Progress

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.

But the changes from the crab apple to the pippin, from the wolf and fox to the house dog, from the charger of Henry V to the brewer's draught horse and the racehorse, are real; for here Man has played the god, subduing Nature to his intention, and ennobling or debasing life for a set purpose. And what can be done with a wolf can be done with a man.

If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.

Construction cumbers the ground with institutions made by busybodies. Destruction clears it and gives us breathing space and liberty.

But I will now go further, and confess to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

and after all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the environment. The unreasonable man adapts the environment to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world.

Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight—that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

And there's such a thing as being oversperitial; we must have something beside Gospel i' this world. Look at the canals, an' th' aqueduc's, an' th' coal-pit engines, and Arkwright's mills there at Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things, I reckon. But t' hear some o' them preachers, you'd think as a man must be doing nothing all's life but shutting's eyes and looking what's agoing on inside him.

Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight - that, in fact, you are exploring a closed basin.